Radio Veronica was an offshore radio station that began broadcasting in 1960, and broadcast from offshore for over fourteen years. It was set up by independent radio, TV and household electrical retailers in the Netherlands to stimulate the sales of radio receivers by providing an alternative to the Netherlands state-licensed stations in Hilversum.

Broadcasts began on 21 April 1960. The station announced itself as VRON (Vrije Radio Omroep Nederland; Free Radio Station [of the] Netherlands) but changed to Radio Veronica, after the poem “Het Zwarte Schaap Veronica” — The Black Sheep Veronica — by the children’s poet Annie M. G. Schmidt.

After the station’s closure, some of its staff applied for a broadcasting licence and continued as a legal organisation with the same name.

The original Radio Veronica became the most popular station in the Netherlands. It broadcast from a former lightshipBorkum Riff anchored off the Dutch coastline. The ship was fitted with a horizontal antenna between the fore and aft masts, fed by a one-kilowatt transmitter. Most of its programmes were recorded in a studio on the Zeedijk in Hilversum. At the end of the 1960s the studios and offices moved to bigger premises on the Utrechtseweg in Hilversum. Initially advertisers were reluctant to buy airtime, but those that did reported increases in sales and gradually the station’s revenue improved.

For a short time the station also ran an English language service under the call letters CNBC (Commercial Neutral Broadcasting Company). Although short-lived, CNBC was presented by professional broadcasters who were able to give invaluable technical advice to Veronica’s Dutch staff.

You could get onto the ship when I was in Amsterdam four or five years ago for an annual offshore radio conference. I went to the bar downstairs and found several others who had come for the same conference there. They had a small display on Radio Veronica on one of the walls. On the opposite side of the river is the REM island which is now a restaurant. This was an artificial island set up to broadcast commercial radio and television to the Netherlands which the Dutch Government raided. The information on their website only mentions the television station but Radio Noordzee was also broadcast on 1400. https://www.remeiland.com/en/history/

Affiliate links

Many of you have suggested in the past that the SWLing Post join an affiliate links program.

The SWLing Post now participates in two affiliate advertising programs with two large retailers that still sell shortwave radios, the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program and the eBay Partnership, designed to provide a means for sites like ours to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to these retailers of radio products. Many of our links now function as affiliate links. This means that by clicking on these links, a small percentage of the purchase price for goods you purchase from these sellers will help support our site’s running costs. We hope you understand, and are grateful for your support.

But please note that we will never create a post and product link explicitly to receive a commission. Additionally, we always try to include links to other retail options if they are available, as we support and freely advertise independent ham radio retailers. Thank you, too, for your support of these sites.

Please support the SWLing Post by adding us to your whitelist in your ad blocker. Our advertisers are by invite only and are only radio related--no junk ads here! Ads are what helps us bring you premium SWLing content! Thank you so much!